Tag: fantasy

The Nerd Guru: Are Video Games Art?

There is a debate I loathe, but which I feel I must address as it feels the need to keep rearing its scaly head from the public consciousness; “Are Video Games Art?”

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Those who pose this question are missing the forest for the trees, judging videogames for their exploitative elements instead of acknowledging the design and collaboration that goes into the medium. People look at game content and see violence, running jumping, reacting quickly. They see something that is titillating, pornographic and entirely reactionary. But video games of today offer a level of creative agency that cannot be found in games of the past/ other mediums of art. This agency is what turns entertainment into self-expression. The ability to experience, discover, and create your own narrative in a medium that would typically be inaccessible (film/animation) .

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Unlike a painting, a novel, or a sculpture, a video game employs  teams of hundreds, working together, to create worlds that are then handed to their fans to be shaped and developed. The curtains raise, the scenes play out, and art is achieved. There are entire labyrinths of imagination laid out for each and every one of us to explore. Great, collaborative artwork the likes of which had never been dreamed before the modern age.

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I have slaughtered innocents, rescued princesses, saved the universe, lost a daughter, loved and lost… all through this medium. I did things that I never could have attempted in our own world! Because of that, I have felt, seen, and expressed things that I never would have; and isn’t that what art is all about?

by Mitch Schiwal & Angie Hoover-Hillhouse

Opening to “Hypochondraway”

There is a bloody rot in this place. It breathes beneath the floors. It lurks in the shadowy vents stalking the weak- hunting for meat until all the sick are swallowed whole. The thick smell of it made my vision go grey.

I’d been here as a child when it was a normal crumpled hospital for normal crumpled cirhossis patients and gangrenous feet. Thoughts of cancer crept into my ear, reminding me that there are poisons in this world that I can taste as clearly as the salt that rides on an ocean breeze.  I wasn’t completely cured yet. Dark, unpleasant thoughts often swelled up in my head leaving no room for cupcake recipes or oven cleaning tips. Today’s Hypochondraway treatment would fix all that though. From now on, ALL my daydreams would be happy and light like lemon meringue.

Excerpt from unfinished science fiction story titled “Hypochondraway” 

 The concept of this fragment is inspired by  a  series of psychosomatic fainting spells I had. The imagery, which I will expand on in later posts,  is taken from a dream I often have where I am sitting in the waiting room of a hospital in the early 1970s. Everything is yellow, linoleum, and humming with the sound of indifferent machinery.

by Angie Hoover-Hillhouse